


The Way It Goes

by Ark



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-30 09:52:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/pseuds/Ark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alaric didn't understand what they were until they weren't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way It Goes

“Well, that's done,” Damon says by way of announcing his arrival. “I'm _smooched_.”

He swoons into the den with emphasized affect, swoons directly into the arms of the nearest bottle of bourbon. “Consider the fair damsel well-kissed. That one'll throw Elena for enough of an angst-loop that we've bought at least another week of her not doing something stupid regarding Stefan.”

Alaric closes the book he's been poorly pretending to read. He looks up from the overstuffed leather couch. Indulges Damon in an indulgent glance, but keeps his tone sarcastic. “Good work. Know it must've been terribly difficult for you.”

“I do suffer for my art,” Damon laments. He carries the whole bottle with him from the sidetable. Damon never moves so much as claims and invades spaces. He unfurls next to Alaric, sprawling perfectly parallel. Their shoulders bump, resettle.

Damon draws a long sip and wipes the back of his mouth with his hand before passing the bottle, a trade to which they're well accustomed. Against too-pale skin his lips are always too red. “No, but really, Ric. She's a dear girl and all but poor Stefan's done nothing to help her with technique. It was anticlimactic.” The faintest quirk of lips. “For me, at least. Elena's world is probably still rocked. I do good work.”

Alaric waves a hand. “Don't want to know. Have to make breakfast for her in the morning and send her off to school and see her in school and pretend I don't know.” He considers. “But if she tells me I'll have to forbid her from seeing your for a while, of course, and that might make her defiant enough to get us another week at minimum. So maybe I should act aware and outraged? Huh.”

Alaric also takes a hearty pull on the bottle. Trust Damon to stumble straight into the most expensive stuff. He sips again. Jesus, what a fucked-up fucking day.

But Damon is grinning. They're close enough together, but he manages to edge closer. “Ever tell you I like the way you think? You're so devious when you want to be.”

“Had a good teacher,” Alaric says, only half-mocking. “When you hang out with an evil son of a bitch all the time it's bound to rub off a little.”

“What about rubbing off?” And Damon is in his lap, claiming and invading all of Alaric's space. Their mouths seek and meet and catch. Alaric wraps his arms around Damon even though it's impossible to contain him and pulls him up and in. They notch together well. They lick and share wet heat, knowing trades of tongue.

“Now that's a kiss,” Damon emerges to say. Alaric draws him back under.

The day's been too messed up for much foreplay or their usual ready banter, Alaric thinks. He has also spent the last few hours fidgeting, staring at nonsense words in books, drinking more, and then more. Worried and wondering about Damon and Elena and the messed-up plan to keep her distracted.

Damon in his lap, Damon's teeth threatening the softest part of his earlobe. He shouldn't have worried.

“Want you,” Alaric admits. “Been wanting you all day in between trying not to die.”

That's the right way to spark a Salvatore, especially this one. Damon's bright eyes on Alaric narrow, then widen, delighted. He frees Alaric's ear. “Oh, how you go on. Go on.”

Alaric edges his fingertips under Damon's t-shirt, letting them fan out against flat muscle, the defined lines that he prefers to trace with his tongue. Finds himself saying more than he means to. “Thought I was a goner. Felt like death twice today. Then I woke up feeling perfect, with the taste of your blood in my mouth.”

“Yeah,” Damon starts, eyes lidded. “About that. Wouldn't have but we didn't see another--”

“No,” says Alaric. “I meant it like, thank you. Thank you for saving my life. Again.”

“Well, shit,” Damon says, pushing a hand up through his hair to hide what Alaric knows is a pleased expression. “You don't have to go all Hallmark card on me, Saltzman.”

“I think I do tonight.” Alaric says. He persuades some more with urging hips. “Let's go to bed.”

“That _would_ be a popular greeting card,” Damon snarks, then stills. “To bed? We usually go to couch. We're already _on_ the couch.”

“Let's go to bed,” Alaric repeats. He only has to say it three times and then they go, like magic.

***

In Damon's wide bed, Alaric asks Damon to fuck him, which isn't something they do very often. Damon doesn't exactly object.

But Damon takes a while getting Alaric naked and even longer getting him ready, pushes them both well past the point of patience.

Then when Damon fucks him, it's slowly and carefully, not what Alaric expected or asked for. No amount of asking can make Damon be rough tonight. After a while Alaric stops trying to slip into their known dynamics and lets Damon do what he's set out to do, lets Damon make love to him.

Damon takes his time. He maps out the majority of Alaric's body with his tongue and conducts an extended, eloquent dialogue with Alaric's cock. He uses all of his bogglingly considerable skill and lips and fingers and lots of lube to open Alaric under him.

In Alaric at last he's all smooth unhurried motion. He never stops touching him, scratching, rubbing, sucking, kissing, pushing them together like fitted puzzle pieces. It's some of the best and strangest sex of Alaric's life. He did ask to be taken to bed by someone with leftover 19th-century mannerisms, he supposes.

When they come they come together, making strange new sounds. Damon's head is down, mouthing at the salty run of sweat on Alaric's collarbone.

“Is that what you wanted, Ric?” he asks Alaric's neck after a time.

“More than I knew I did,” says Alaric. Damon shifts out and away but doesn't go far, stays half-sprawled across him. Finding it convenient and warm, they sleep that way.

***

The early-morning sun uncovers Alaric warm and squinting, feeling stepped-on, but not too bad considering he'd been dead once and nearly a second time the day before. Damon is naked in bed alongside him, asleep. Asleep, no hint of devious intent shades his marble brow. He could be the statue of an angel instead of a demon.

Alaric awakens him the one way guaranteed to dislodge Damon from slumber: swallows his cock whole, cups a hand under his balls. Damon wakes up and wakes up immediately on Alaric's tongue, and Alaric blows him to within an inch of his life before Damon can ask after the time.

“Thanks for the alarm,” Damon drawls, stretching cat-like while Alaric dresses for the drive back to the Gilbert's. “You're the best. Grill after school tonight? We have plots to plot, things to kill.”

Alaric shakes his head. “Can't. Have parent-teacher conferences for parents of troubled kids, and in Mystic Falls that's half the adolescent population. Tomorrow we could--”

Damon waves that away. “Whatever, Mother Teresa. I need to stop by anyway to see how our Elena-stew is bubbling along. I'll see you later.”

“Okay,” says Alaric, and as he drops a kiss on Damon's lips, his own still heavy with the taste of Damon, he tries to remember the last time a night hadn't ended with Damon in it later.

***

Later, much later, after an exhausting day, Alaric fucks Damon hard but as quietly as he can, so the wooden bed won't creak and alert Elena down the hall. It'd taken a while, but Alaric had finally gotten over the weirdness factor of having Damon Salvatore in Jenna Sommers's old room. He'd resisted until it felt like enough time had passed and the room was more his own.

It helps to know that Jenna wouldn't have totally disapproved. She'd always looked at the thing that was between him and Damon like she kind of understood -- was one of the only people in Mystic Falls to stare head-on and acknowledge it. _I like you and all, Ric, but not enough to sign up for third wheel on that roller coaster. Do you know what you're doing?_ He'd told Jenna he had no idea whatsoever, and they'd stayed on excellent terms and been better friends than lovers, while he and Damon had gone careening on in their improbably two-wheeled wagon.

Alaric presses Damon back into the soft pillows and does him silently but with the rougher urgency denied the night before. It's remarkable how the thought of getting to do this had gotten him through miserable hours of speaking about miserable topics with miserably distraught families.

When he'd driven up at last to the blessed sight of Damon's car he'd sent Elena to bed because it was damnably late (he could do that now, could send children to bed), then hauled Damon up the stairs by his belt in response to the question of whether or not he wanted a drink.

The first round of frenetic sex takes Alaric's frustrated edge off and after the second they laze about together, all cooled sweat and nude bodies, plotting plots in low voices. In the morning Damon is gone from bed. Alaric can hear him in the kitchen, making Elena laugh. It's a good sound, and rare, lately.

He stumbles down in disheveled pajamas. Damon is fully dressed, looking only a little mussed. “Heya, Ric,” he hails at Alaric's entrance. “Sorry I fell asleep on the couch after that last drink. As I was just telling the exquisite Miss Gilbert.” Elena reddens and rolls her eyes right on cue, and so misses the way Damon smirks over her head.

“Not a problem. Hope you slept okay,” Alaric returns, smirking back.

Damon's making fresh banana pancakes, slicing the fruit thin with neat turns of his wrist. He composes golden-brown stacks for them with melting butter and strawberries on top. Alaric and Elena devour the breakfast and head to school with more energy than their usual hasty cereal-bowls permit, and Damon stays behind to clean up at the house, snacking on blood-red berries and an authentic Bloody Mary.

***

They have fried snacks and too many drinks at the Grill. Other people talk to them but always seem to inevitably pass back out of orbit. Alaric and Damon really set in at the bar _is_ rather like a black hole, and most of the others spin away in a hurry.

They hear stilted updates from Caroline and Tyler, out on a tentative date. Bonnie stalks through, looking gloomy, giving both of them her very best fuck-you look, but she softens when Alaric buys and slips her two bottled beers. They watch her disappear into a hidden corner of the restaurant with Matt in tow.

Damon laughs, tilts Alaric an ironic cheers before downing his shot. “You really are the worst substitute parent ever.”

“I do my best to retain the title,” Alaric says smilingly. They've already had more than enough to drink and it's the point in the evening where it feels like everyone should join them. They're certainly hilarious enough to each other, it's a wonder the whole place isn't merrily up in arms.

But the Grill doesn't produce any further amusements no matter how long they wait so they go back to Alaric's loft. One of the reasons he holds onto it is for nights like this, he realizes as he unlocks the door. Days and nights like this, when he needs to hear Damon scream and be the cause of screaming.

***

The next day is wondrously a Saturday. They sleep in much too late the way they both like to do sometimes. Alaric wakes up first, leaves Damon sprawled over half the bed with all of the covers.

He cooks omelets with shredded cheese and caramelized onions. They're sloppily flipped but taste fine. There's a bag of blood in his fridge alongside the orange juice and he takes the lot of it back to the bedroom. Damon's nose wrinkles at the smell of onions and Type-O poured into a coffee mug and he deigns to open his eyes.

They eat breakfast in bed and share out the morning paper. They talk of nothing Mystic Falls-related for a beautiful hour. They manage a cramped but deliciously hot bath in the bathroom, where Alaric has Damon kneel on colder stone while he fucks him from behind, his hands on Damon's pale hips, his fingertips bruising blue-purple-red like paint on a canvas. After that they go back to bed and sleep again until the sun goes down.

***

Damon picks him up from school so they can hit the road without a hiccup and make better time before sundown. All of their mixed weaponry, now a considerable arsenal, is in the backseat.

It's been a while since they've had new vampires to deal with in Mystic Falls, and both of them are hungry for what's coming. Damon has looked into it: a mercenary nest, irredeemable bloodsucking scum, setting up shop nearby to ingratiate themselves with Klaus's new order. That will never do.

They take down the house like a finely choreographed dance. First, the fires set at precise points and lit and fed and lovingly encouraged to spread. The vampires buzzing out all ant-like. Then the vervain grenades start. The bombs bursting in air. Then the screaming. Then the sound of stakes, snick-snick-snick, he and Damon awash in death as they waltz through.

They make it, just barely, to a broke-down motel like something out of Hitchcock's nightmares by the side of a highway. There's plenty of room at the inn. Theirs is the only car in the lot.

Damon, blood-splattered and smiling, compels them a room. They then proceed to completely destroy it, smashing up against cheap porcelain lamps, tearing curtains from cracked rods, breaking all the thin glasses on the counter.

They rip into each other on the sagging bed. They make the headboard beat with angry rhythm against the wall for hours. They take turns sucking and fucking and trying to tame adrenaline to little surcease.

They're too buzzed, it had all been too good, had gone so fucking perfectly, and now they were fucking so perfectly together. It's all too good for a crummy bereft room with peeling yellow paint and a bed that can't hold them, that breaks under them. So they just let themselves screw on the broken bed until the sun comes up if that's what their bodies and psyches need.

After showering they drive to Waffle House, leaving money behind in the room but most of all leaving the motel behind and all of it behind.

At Waffle House they order half the menu and double sides of hashbrowns scattered, smothered and covered and buy cigarettes from the regulars at the counter. They smoke in perfect silence over smoking coffees in a corner booth for hours they don't count. Alaric takes his cup with cream, no sugar; Damon asks for it black.

***

Liz Forbes is the first to ask aloud. Even Jenna hadn't tried to name them. Strange that the Sheriff figures it out before Alaric entirely does. Maybe not.

“So she actually said, 'sexual relations with Mr. Saltzman,' like you're a congressman or something,” Damon is mid-relaying. He's naked, slick and sated next to Alaric on the couch. Had waited to volunteer this new information until they'd reached that point, his voice a rich purr. “Worse, she accused me of compelling you like I did with Andie. And I thought we were _friends,_ Lizzy and I. She said to stop immediately or she'll have to do something to save you from me.”

Alaric snorts. “Would that she could.”

Damon chews on his lower lip. When he speaks again, he sounds more philosophical and less purring. “So...Liz knows, which means the council's been briefed. Bonnie knows; she knows too much about everyone. Matt knows because he's seen us leave the Grill most nights, helped carry one or the other of us to a car. Stefan's walked in a dozen times. I'm starting to think he plans it. Klaus knows because he knows everything. Elijah knows because...well...” Damon's smirk deepens. “Well. Katherine knows because she can read me like a book. Caroline knows because she's a vampire and can smell the sex on us. What Caroline knows Tyler knows. That means...”

Alaric feels himself stiffening, and not in a good way. “Go on,” he says. Why are his shoulders so tight? He swallows too thickly. His hands open and close, grasp around nothing.

Damon turns a little to look at him. His hair is darker with sweat, and though his form is flawless, minutes ago it had borne dozens of marks from Alaric's hasty mouth and gripping fingertips. “I'm saying that we should tell Elena. She's the only one who matters who doesn't know.” Damon's lips pull an oddly hesitant smile below his ever-piercing eyes. “Maybe it'll throw her enough to buy us a whole month Stefan-lite.”

Alaric's mouth is dry as he says it. He has sawdust ground between his teeth. He's frozen, he can't think, can't process this conversation, won't make sense out of Damon's words.

So he makes himself say: “Tell Elena what?”

Damon slips from the couch, pads naked across the room, opens and closes the door. Doesn't slam it. That he saves for upstairs. He just goes.

Alaric watches him leave and then hears the further retreat, Damon's tread on the boards directly above, then the hard definite slam of a door that rattles the boarding house.

“Sonnovabitch,” says Alaric, not sure whom he's addressing.

After a good while Stefan pokes his head into the library. “What happened? Damon's playing Chopin over and over. On the gramophone.”

He's still bare-assed on the couch and doesn't move to cover himself. What Damon said: Stefan walked in on them regularly enough, and it isn't like Alaric particularly gives a damn at the moment. He feels like he's taken a sledgehammer to the solar plexus.

“Not now, Stefan.” Alaric attempts to wave the younger Salvatore from his own property. There's a time and a place for psychotic Stefan and now is precisely neither.

Stefan leans in against the doorjamb. Squares his shoulders and folds his arms, tries to puff up. “Maybe I should just kill you for good and _really_ piss him off.”

Alaric scrubs a hand across his brow but his head won't stop splitting. “Stefan. _Not now_.” If he ever has to kill Damon's little brother and Elena's derailed beloved it will be in an apocalyptic rain of fire and blood, not in the library.

Stefan shrugs, then ventures over to the nearest display of bottles and pours out two neat drinks. On his way back to the door, he passes one to Alaric.

Stefan swirls the liquid in his glass. “That bad, huh?” He makes a vague attempt not to sound gleeful about it.

Alaric groans, takes a long grateful sip. It helps a little with his head. “I think at this point presenting him with my body would be good for a brotherly chortle.”

“Ooh,” says Stefan. “That bad. Well, text me when it's over. I'm out for a bite. Can't stand Damon when he's broody like this.”

“Ha,” from Alaric. “Pot, kettle, black, et cetera.”

Stefan makes a sound like _tut-tut_. “If you think I'm a bad case, remember he's the one who stayed in love with the harpy who betrayed him for a hundred and fifty-odd-plus-years. I don't have anything on Damon in the obsession department.” He knocks back the drink, wavers with his hand on the doorknob. “But tell Elena I said hi, won't you?”

Then Stefan Salvatore exits stage right. Before the door closes Alaric can hear faint scratchy wailing of far-off music.

 _Okay, this is fucked up, I fucked up,_ Alaric thinks, addressing his remaining best friend, whiskey. _I am a complete and total fuck-up inevitably and some things never change. This was a monumental fuck-up of epic proportions and I can't do anything right now to make it right. But he'll understand. He'll come back calmer and I'll say better things and we'll fuck and it'll be okay. It's always okay._

***

It isn't okay because Damon doesn't come back.

Alaric sees him sometimes in town, of course, it's a small enough as is. Damon passes him like he's one of Jeremy's ghosts.

At council meetings he looks everywhere but at Alaric. He's never at the Grill when Alaric is, though the staff says they see him often enough.

At night, Alaric's bed is empty. Everything is too cold. The pillows are wrong, the covering is. At some point he stops sleeping all the way through.

He tries working out in the loft, to distract himself, to exhaust himself, but the silence is so choking all he can hear are the echo of screams. He resists the overwhelming urge to add to them.

He knows his cooking is uninspired, and he and Elena spend a lot of time poking over suddenly awkward dinners. There are no fancy suppers and banana pancake breakfasts forthcoming.

His bed is so fucking quiet. It's hard to even work up the energy to jerk off, since inspiration aches.

He starts drinking too much, starting at sundown. It doesn't always have to be exact. He stops making coherent lesson plans.

Over macaroni from a blue box and bourbon one evening, Elena finally ventures, “Where has Damon been? I've seen him a little but it's like the two of you had a fight or something.”

Alaric stirs at his plate of runny orange noodles. “Or something,” he says. “Ask me tomorrow.”

***

Tomorrow arrives unerringly and after school Alaric prepares a better meal for the girl in his charge he's come to care for like -- more than -- his own blood. It defied definitions, what he and Elena had, but most things in Mystic Falls challenged expectations.

She's both foster daughter and brave little sister, and Alaric is proud of her, proud to help mentor her in his way and help her grow stronger. He knows he isn't the best possible influence but that they both think his presence better than not. They understand each other with the sympathy of people accustomed to loss and difficult living.

Alaric makes a mixed salad, garlic bread, lasagna with vegetables. He picks out a light white wine for them to share. His hands are shaking a little, because he isn't drunk.

“What's all this?” Elena asks when she breezes in. Alaric dishes out pasta oozing three cheeses, healthy greens, less-healthy garlicky bread. They tuck in with the unabashed enthusiasm lacking in recent days. They smile at each other in dairy overload.

Then Alaric says, half his wine-cup drained, before he can say anything else: “I'm seeing Damon.”

The words don't feel wrong, only cut close because he's not sure that they count for anything anymore.

Elena's too-big eyes blink. She plucks a tomato from the salad and pops it into her mouth. “Seeing Damon when?”

Alaric drinks the rest of his wine. There isn't enough in the glass or in the bottle for this. “No. I mean. As in, _seeing_ him. Dating him, sort of. I think. Yes. Doing that.”

“Oh.” Elena has another tomato, nearly blushes its ripe color. “Well. Duh.”

_Oh. Well. Duh._

Alaric needs more to drink. “What did you say?”

“I mean, was it supposed to be a secret or something, Ric? I have, like, eyes.” Elena rolls them, rolls them second-story-wards. “And, um, ears.” She forks a generous bite of lasagna. “I figured you didn't want to talk about it for some reason or whatever, but maybe now you'll call off Damon's whole Romeo and Juliet doomed subplot with me, okay? I'm perfectly reasonable these days regarding Stefan.” She looks at Alaric over the raised utensil. “Stefan hasn't, like, said anything about me at all, has he?”

Alaric sits back in the chair. Collapses would better describe it. The hard wood backing digs into his spine. “You know? You don't mind?”

Elena is still acting like he's tuning in from another planet. “Haven't you guys been together for, like, ages? Stefan and I used to talk about it, before he—Anyway. Right. So, of course not. I mean, I've been watching 'My Two Dads' on Netflix with Caroline for months.”

With Alaric still sitting back from the table, Elena reaches across and lays her hand over his. “I want you to be happy, Ric,” she says, all bright shiny hair and eyes. “Doesn't he make you happy?”

“Yeah,” says Alaric. It's the first time he's said it aloud. “Yes. As happy as anyone can be made in this fucking town.” He and Elena are long past the point of masking a mutual tendency to swear when emphasis was needed.

Elena sighs gently, taking back her hand after she smooths his fingers. “We never realize how much that means until they're gone,” she says, his daughter-sister-niece-friend, this child too wise and bruised for her years. She saves her garlic bread for last, like a dessert. "Remember that he isn't."

They finish off the meal in easy camaraderie, and when they're loading up the dishwasher Alaric wants to hug her, so he does. “Thank you,” he tells Elena's brilliant hair.

She squeezes back, then steps away laughing. “God, the two of you deserve each other. I swear you're the only person I know who's more unnecessarily obsessive than Damon.”

“Ouch,” protests Alaric, spraying her with soap suds in retaliation. It fast sets off a kitchen battle royal, leaving the place a ruinous mess they decide to leave until morning.

“Best parental figure ever,” Elena chirps as they go upstairs and open and close their doors goodnight.

***

Damon climbs through the open window Alaric has been keeping unhinged on purpose.

Alaric has his back to the window but feels Damon in the room regardless. Doesn't turn around, not yet. “I told Elena.”

Damon's sharp voice, so missed, so mocking. “Told Elena what?”

“The truth.” Now Alaric does turn around. He knows he's looked a good bit better. There are shadows under his eyes from not sleeping enough and his hands are still unsteady from not drinking enough. Damon looks perfect, damn him, tailored and frozen in time. “What matters. That we're -- that we're together. That you make me happy.”

“It does? We are? I do?” Damon in an impeccable, expensive all-black suit, black dress shirt and brushed black shoes, all shiny like onyx, nothing belying he'd just scaled a tree and a house. Damon still all mocking tones, round grey eyes like mirrors showing nothing. Then he turns away, turns the accusing gaze from Alaric, smiles his little trademark smirk at the corner. “I know. Elena texted me in the middle of your culinary heart-to-heart.”

“Jesus,” Alaric says. His legs feel weak and he makes for the edge of the bed. “I'm the last to know everything around here.”

“Yes,” Damon agrees. “You are. When, pray tell, did it first occur to you that we were in a relationship, Alaric Saltzman?”

“I don't know.” Alaric answers as honestly as the fool he is. “For so long it was just this thing we did.”

“It was,” Damon agrees again. He's being too agreeable. “Until we started doing it damned near every day and almost precisely every night, and excluding other people from the arrangement.” The agreeability starts to curdle, turn. “You're what I've looked at when I've shut my eyes and then again in the mornings for more than a _year,_ and you asked me what it was we ought to tell Elena.”

Alaric is glad he's sitting down. “I wasn't...wasn't trying to deny that we'd long the passed fuck-buddy stage. Maybe I thought if I didn't name it, this wouldn't go the way of my other relationships. Namely, with you dead. I couldn't--”

Damon is hovering by the window. Looks too ready to spring. “Not good enough,” he says, shaking his ink-dark hair. “Not after everything we've been.”

Alaric holds out a hand to stop him. If he were a warlock he would hold him in place with his brain. His act of reaching has to suffice. “Damon. Look, I'm an idiot, okay? A stubborn asshole of the highest order. And I know that because you like me.” Alaric's rehearsed this in his head but all of his neatly-planned speeches are gone. He gropes after what he knows. “I'm slow to catch on. But not that slow. These days without you -- I'd forgotten what it was to be that alone. You showed me how to not be that.”

It's all coming out wrong; none of it will come out the way he wants it too. He tries again. “I'm -- I'm not good at it. Being alone. When I'm not with someone I obsess over what's lost. I'm unbalanced that way. Need balancing. And you did that. I didn't get how much you did. I used to tell myself you were my secret. Another indulgence. Part of my recklessness.”

Damon is standing still, listening, outlined in the glass pane. Alaric says, “But you weren't that. You were the cure. You went there with me, but you showed me other things. How to come back from it. How to blend in. How to fight really bad guys. How to make a new life again. And we've been doing that together, haven't we? Nothing's been lost or lacking for a long time.”

Damon starts to turn a little, so Alaric goes on full-steam, gives all he has: “We'll tell everyone we know, and the football team besides. Someone will throw us a party. Caroline, probably. The council will elect us co-presidents eventually. You'll stay here whenever you want, in the bedroom. We'll go to your bedroom at the boarding house because Stefan really _is_ enjoying it too much. I'll make you keys to the loft. Keys to the classroom, if you want them. Keys to here. Keys to everywhere.”

At the window Damon only remains covered by his small smirk-smile. His composure is thinning, his stoic mask faltering. “So easy?” he says.

“No,” says Alaric. “It's going to be fucking hard. Something will probably try to kill us by Tuesday, and will likely partially succeed. We have hybrids and vampires everywhere, I have AP and SAT prep coming up, God help me, plus the care of a mystical teenage girl, and you have an insane, murderous vampire brother and an insane, murderous Original vampire-werewolf on your ass. I think it's going to be unicorns and freaking rainbows. I think,” says Alaric, breathing hard by the end, “That if I don't get to be with you and have sex with you through these things, I'm going to end up crazier than Stefan.”

“Now this,” says Damon, “This is far better logic.” When he turns to really see Alaric's face his expression softens, changes. Becomes recognizable again. He looks relieved, triumphant, and something like Damon's version of abashed. “Ric, you have to understand. Vampires don't bond easily. Our instinct pushes for the opposite. We're solitary predators on a never-ending hunt.”

Damon moves too smoothly from the window, proving it. “Most people are temporary playthings, pawns, or food. When we really take a lover, we're consumed by it until we're not. Everything is always amplified. We find it...difficult...to process rejection in that quarter.” Closer still. “And I haven't been with anyone else, long enough for it to count.”

He paces near, runs up against Alaric's legs on the bed. “Our see-saw takes two. It's you who have kept me balanced. Taught me to be a model citizen. Been the better influence. Shown me there are people not worth killing. Worth keeping alive at all costs. Given me,” says Damon, “better things to live for than death or eternity.” He slides fingers under Alaric's jaw and tilts his stubbled cheek and fair hair into the lamplight. “And I won't claim I'm not consumed.”

Alaric sits very still, letting Damon look at him. Then he reaches up to draw Damon down. It feels so good to touch him again and be touched that Alaric's hands aren't shaking anymore; Damon's a heady enough buzz.

“Can't promise we won't fight again,” he murmurs. “We probably will in a minute or two. But I'm sorry for how I was. How I acted, and how I didn't act. I didn't understand what we were until we weren't. And I missed you, Damon. So fucking much.”

That's the real way to spark this Salvatore.

They're quiet for a while after that, their mouths over-loud. They fuck on Alaric's bed with such vigorous enthusiasm they threaten to break it and repeat the motel debacle. It's the first go of the three times they have sex that night, and it lasts for so long and is so fucking brilliant they start defying space and time and laws of physics to forestall the inevitable conclusion. Wrapped up in Damon is where Alaric needs to be and he intends to stay there.

The second time Damon rises over him. He's luminescent in the dim light. He's always luminescent. He teases Alaric's cock to attention with tricky turns of his skillful wrist. His moondust eyes are on Alaric. He lowers himself onto him with exquisite care, still not looking away, sharing the inches between them. Then Alaric is fully in him and Damon is fully seated, and Damon rides him with an unbridled rhythm the bed and Alaric and Damon groan with until the room evaporates.

The third time is very slow and much later. Even Damon's body had its eventual limits and Alaric has left his behind hours ago. He'll pay for it in the morning but every ache and bruise and mark only electrifies him now. They kiss slowly, and touch with trailing fingertips. The earth stops turning and centers on them moving centimeters against each other in bed. They make love with their eyes open, Damon anchored deep between Alaric's thighs.

***

They wake up that way -- Damon tangled, trapped by tricky thighs. Alaric moves smoothly to straddle him, buoyed by the deepest sleep he's had in days.

His body is screaming overuse in the five different languages Alaric is familiar with but he won't listen, not yet. Not with Damon caught sleepy underneath him. Damon is not what would be termed a morning person, which made every morning a challenge.

When it was against his inclination Damon only opened his eyes to early sunlight for sex or for blood. Alaric gives him both. Starts to touch and tease him in all the best places, earning a half-aware glance and a minute yawn from Damon. Alaric nips at the fleshy point of his index finger with a safety pin and pushes it into Damon's closing mouth.

Damon's eyes go spectacularly circular and utterly, gorgeously awake. After a tentative touch of his tongue he moans without reserve and sucks at Alaric's finger so hard that Alaric laughs and has to move up over him to replace finger with cock. He comes halfway down Damon's throat and rewards him with another pin-prick.

“Why did you stop taking vervain?” Damon asks once he's squeezed all he can from the tiny incision. His tongue darts out, chasing greedily after the taste. He sports the doubled glaze of sex and impossibly fresh blood.

“So that I could make your eyes look like they do now,” says Alaric.

***

So they sleep and eat and have sex. Alaric works, training young minds in the joys and horrors of history. Damon throws himself into the council, negotiating with local witches and allied vampires, creating a coalition to keep the town safe from future threats. The recruits set up protective spells and safeguards in exchange for amnesty in Mystic Falls, forming patrols that walk the streets and woods at night. Incidents of animal attacks fall dramatically.

They reach a more uneasy deal with Klaus: a small supply of Elena's blood every three months for the purposes of hybrid-making and keeping them all alive. The most essential part of the agreement is Stefan's full release from compulsion.

Elena is there to testify that if the peace is broken, if any of her friends are hurt, she is prepared to turn herself and end the expansion of Klaus's little werepire-empire forever. She's grown so strong and steely-eyed, all lithe muscle now, trained to kill things. Elijah beams. Klaus believes her.

They sleep and eat and have sex, and kill things, often now with Elena in training at their side, and they drink together into long nights. Damon has kept Alaric to his word and has an expansive jangly key-ring to rival a janitor's.

But after some of Klaus's dust has settled it becomes apparent that the multi-housing arrangement is impractical. Alaric and Elena box up their stuff and Jeremy's and Jenna's old things and store most of it in the basement. They had wanted to bring Jeremy back once the imminent threat had passed, but a visit to Denver and the cheerful, smiling, thriving young man there convinced them otherwise. They sublet the Gilbert house to a nice family and move the rest of their things into the boarding house.

Elena takes a sunny upstairs room diagonal from Stefan's. Alaric installs an extra bookshelf in Damon's bedroom and stays there.

Damon helps him convert the open triangular space of the attic into an office. They spend a day there building more bookshelves in the dust since it's hard to squeeze furniture up the narrow wooden ladder. They get a chair and desk up somehow.

Through the small windows Alaric overlooks greenery from on high and reads and researches and writes. They drag a futon up eventually after it becomes one of their favorite places to sneak away and the desk won't hold them.

They sleep together and cook elaborate meals together. Their tastes are similar, but Damon has greater range that he likes to show off for their mutual benefit. Then Alaric will take the trays they've prepared downstairs while Damon steps outside to grab a furry drink.

They go to where Elena's sitting in the rocking chair beside the cell in the basement. Damon has strung up Christmas lights and neon plastic icicles in an attempt to make the place less gloomy. She's usually talking at Stefan through the bars, but sometimes she's reading or doing homework, and grateful for their company. Sometimes Bonnie or Caroline or both girls are with her, but the low hallway, dank cell and its tormented occupant are too much for most to handle. Only Elena goes down every day.

For a very long time Stefan doesn't say anything outside of sobbing, but he drinks from the animals Damon brings, and every now and then picks at the food as though to humor them.

Within six months he says his first words in response to the one-sided monologue Elena has maintained by the heavy door. After eight, they're talking again, the door unbolted, Elena perched near Stefan in his chains. By twelve months Stefan leaves the cell and comes tremulously back upstairs. Under her care, he starts to return to them.

After heated squabbles Alaric had allowed Elena to finish off of her senior year in homeschooling. She'd already been accepted to college and the remaining credits are an afterthought. Instead she studies vampire rehabilitation and vampire hunting, excelling at both. Alaric is glad for the balance.

Balance is what he and Damon sought and balance is what they retain together. Every day is new and exciting and dangerous and also wonderfully anticipated and gorgeously predictable.

The sight of Damon in a leather jacket waiting for him at the bar never stops being thrilling. Damon's shared grin after a satisfyingly badass kill is always there when he seeks it. Damon's eyes looking up from under him is cemented as Alaric's favorite sight. They eat and sleep and fuck and kill and die and live again and love.

When all is said and done, Caroline throws them a party.

 


End file.
